Political Change Overtakes
Candidates, Leaders

Brandon Sun “Small
World” Column, Monday, November 3 / 14Zack
Gross

It
is a time of elections and the stress that comes with votes and
anticipated results. Of course, democracy is better than
dictatorship. It’s just that we wouldn’t have to worry about who
was going to win (or lose) if we didn’t have the vote! We’d
likely have other things to worry about, like who was going to come in
the dead of night and take us away for wanting to be able to vote.

We’ve
just experienced civic and municipal elections across Canada during the
last week of October. In some cases, prominent mayoral candidates
on the so-called Left didn’t do as well as expected – in Winnipeg,
Brandon and Toronto, for instance. Centrist and
more-to-the-so-called-Right mayoral candidates did very well in those
cities while observers feel that elected councils actually moved
somewhat leftward on the political spectrum, setting up interesting
times in City Halls.

Provincially, our Premier has been
experiencing something of a revolt as his party’s support in the polls
has been stagnant around 30% and an election looms just more than a
year away. This is happening despite the fact that Greg Selinger
won the NDP’s largest number of seats and fourth consecutive majority
mandate not too long ago.

Federally, our Prime Minister is also
seen as facing his “last days” although the tragic events in Ottawa
recently may ironically give his popularity a boost. The
conservative British Economist magazine recently opined that Stephen
Harper had done his best to remake Canada over the past ten years but
that now Canadians were tired of him and wanted to return to more
Liberal politics in the next election, now less than a year away.

One
of the largest and youngest democracies in our world, Brazil, held its
national election on October 26th. Dilma Rousseff, a former
Marxist guerrilla fighter and now leader of the Workers Party, which
has been in power since 2003, was returned to office for a second
four-year term, but with only 52% of the vote. Her opposition,
the more right-leaning Social Democratic Party did very well in what
was Brazil’s closest ever election.

What the Workers Party
offers to the people of Brazil is a guarantee of social programs –
health, public transportation, a rising minimum wage and education – in
a country where some are very well off, but many are abjectly poor and
depend on government to get by. What the Social Democrats want is
a more business-friendly government with less red tape and taxes,
hoping that the once buoyant Brazilian economy can take off again.

All
Brazilians want a government with much less corruption and the renewed
energy to tackle emerging issues such as growing quality of life
expectations, a deteriorating environment and unstable capital
markets. With a smaller mandate after the close vote, with
pressure by business to disregard the effects of large-scale farming on
the Amazon, with decreasing demand from China for Brazilian exports,
and with a growing controversy around corruption issues, it looks like
a difficult road ahead for the newly re-elected government.

Rousseff
has promised to bring greater dialogue to the Brazilian democracy in
the face of a very divided electorate. In Winnipeg, our new Mayor
– although with a very large mandate – has also promised to consult
other candidates for his job to listen to their ideas for the
city. Some call this “the new politics”, but others – more
cynical in their thinking – doubt that this attitude is sincere and
expect that “old politics” will soon be back in operation, just with
new players.

A new book on electoral politics in Canada observed
that our demographics have changed so greatly in recent years that
politicians are having trouble keeping up with the trends. The
greater number of “new Canadians” immigrating to our country may make
our politics more conservative. It will also mean that our
political arena, which was once the purview of white, middle and upper
class males, will now have more women and people of a range of
multicultural backgrounds. The Manitoba government has embraced
this with a large number of women MLAs and Cabinet Ministers, and
Canada’s first woman of colour Minister.

As well, with the
incredible growth of cities – Toronto is now behind only New York, Los
Angeles and Mexico City in size in North America – the political clout
of rural areas and small towns – and therefore farmers and other rural
people - will continue to decline. Vancouver is another one of
the fastest growing urban areas on the planet.

Our world is in
flux and it may be getting harder to predict how that will play out in
our political lives. To ensure a vibrant and substantive
democracy – more than just going to vote every few years – we need a
citizenry that is engaged in the issues of the day and a government
that is willing to listen and to act.

Zack Gross is a former Executive Director of the Marquis Project in Brandon.